Donald Trump’s legal team has refiled its lawsuit over a Wall Street Journal story alleging that he had sent a “bawdy” letter to the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein in 2003, after a Florida judge had dismissed the case last month.
The move restarts a bombshell case that pits the US president against one of his key media allies, Rupert Murdoch.
A spokesperson for Trump’s legal team called the case, which also names the Murdoch-owned Journal publisher Dow Jones and reporters Khadeeja Safdar and Joe Palazzolo, a “powerhouse lawsuit” and said: “The President will continue to hold those who mislead the American People with Fake News and smears accountable for their actions.”
In April, Judge Darrin P Gayles said that Trump’s team had not adequately argued that the Journal’s July 2025 publication was done with actual malice, meaning those responsible for the story published it despite knowing it was false or highly likely to be false. But he dismissed the case “without prejudice” and gave Trump time to refile the case with new evidence provided.
In his ruling, Gayles argued that there was significant evidence that the Journal sought to determine whether the letter – featuring a drawing of a naked woman’s torso around an imagined conversation between Trump and Epstein – was genuine, and that the fact that Trump claimed it was fake did not mean that the Journal acted “with serious doubts” about the story.
The new lawsuit, which is seven pages longer than the original, continues to claim that the letter to Epstein does not exist. “The reason for those failures is that Defendants did not have access to any such letter when the Article was published, which is a fact because no authentic letter or drawing exists,” it reads.
Lawyers for Donald Trump have said the card released by lawmakers investigating the Jeffrey Epstein case was fake. Illustration: Reuters
The letter was released by the House oversight committee in September after it was provided by Epstein’s estate.
The lawsuit claimed that Murdoch told Trump, “I will handle it,” when the president called him and told him the story was untrue – “which President Trump reasonably interpreted as meaning that Murdoch believed President Trump, and that the article would not be published”.
Trump’s legal team also cited comments made by Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell, who said she did not recall the letter. (The Journal’s original story noted that Maxwell “didn’t respond to a letter requesting an interview sent to her in prison”.)
“Of the two surviving individuals who could substantiate whether President Trump had submitted a birthday letter, one person, President Trump, vehemently denied the existence of the alleged letter, and the other person has testified to a federal official that she had no knowledge of it,” the complaint alleges. “Defendants Safdar, Palazzolo, Dow Jones, and News Corp either knew these facts, or deliberately avoided investigating such information, while nevertheless publishing the false, malicious, and defamatory Article.”
The amended complaint includes the allegation that the Journal intentionally omitted Trump’s denial of the letter – though the original story noted that “Trump denied writing the letter or drawing the picture”.
Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump at the Mar-a-Lago estate, Palm Beach, Florida, in February 1997. Photograph: Davidoff Studios Photography/Getty Images
Trump’s legal team had sought to conduct a limited amount of discovery to produce evidence of actual malice before filing its revised lawsuit – but Gayles recently denied that request, arguing that it was improper and “contravenes the purpose behind the actual malice standard”.
The lawsuit asks for $10bn in compensation, though it’s unclear what that number is based on.
A spokesperson for Dow Jones has been contacted for comment about the revised lawsuit.
For years, in and out of office, Trump has waged legal battles against media companies he dislikes. While he won settlements in cases against CBS and ABC News for tens of millions of dollars, earmarked for his future presidential library, he still has outstanding lawsuits against the New York Times and the BBC.
